


The Strangest Riddle

by lightningwaltz



Category: Messiah Project - All Media Types
Genre: Ariga probably still has that scratch on his face!, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Shinku, Recovery, Understanding, like right after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-15 20:45:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8072149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningwaltz/pseuds/lightningwaltz
Summary: Ariga and Souma have a conversation





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elizabetamargie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizabetamargie/gifts).



> Spontaneous and belated birthday present for Ela. I <3 you and I hope it's okay to drop 1500 words of angst on you for your birthday, heh.
> 
> This is... Kind of a character study of Ariga as filtered through a conversation with Souma. I just find their similarities (and differences!) rather fascinating. I think Ariga is likely to have good days and bad days and I wanted to explore a hypothetical convo between these two on a bad day.

For a while, Ariga doesn’t hear this conversation. 

Words waft back and forth, and his answers must be correct because Gojou doesn’t act like he’s listening to gibberish. The guy is just sitting at the computer desk and blueish light from the screen shimmers in his hair. It makes his headband look even darker than it is, circling his forehead like some inverse halo. Sometimes Ariga squints and sees how it’s just cloth. Something you buy for incredibly cheap at a nearby store. The harder he looks, the less substantial it appears, though. 

There’s a compartment in Ariga’s brain where he stores things like this. Minor observations from times of immobile tranquility. Times when observing was all he could do.

Exhibit 1: His holding cell when he’d been suspect of Mamiya’s crimes. There had been a series of cracks in the gray walls, as fine as lacework. If that same design had been transformed into a labyrinth, no one would escape. You’d die of dehydration first. 

Exhibit 2: When he’d been bound, blindfolded, gagged. The blanket beneath his neck had been frayed but strangely clean-smelling. How many beds had it seen? 

Exhibit 3: When he’d reeked of gunpowder and noticed that dark purple obscures the color of blood. 

All the while, Gojou is talking and Ariga is replying. How strange. They’re going over matters related to global security. Really important stuff. It’s strange because it’s not really necessary for Ariga to be _present_. His memories are needed. So are the parts of his body that produce speech. Ariga himself can hover just beyond it, though. Like a ghost still attached to a living body. 

Maybe Sakura’s research analysts can look into it. This strange paradox of a person who is here and gone at the same time. Maybe this sort of thing can be used as a way to gather intelligence. Or a method of defense. 

Oh. Gojou is watching him with an expectant air. A sign of the inevitable conversational fumble. A failure to respond. Ariga waits for an influx of embarrassment or shame. Instead he assesses the situation. He breaks it down to what he sees as the most immutable fact. 

_This conversation is lost on me._

Shirasaki would probably glow with admiration. Yuuri would probably be awkward and charming. All belated eagerness for new connections, new relationships.

Kagami… Well. That’s a mystery. To be determined. But Ariga is pretty sure he’d be entirely here. Entirely in this room. Entirely in his body. 

“Ah, yes, my apologies.” Ariga straightens his back a little, and wishes they were standing. Sitting at the corner of his own bed suddenly seems way too familiar. “I have no further information to report.” 

His abductors had talked about Gojou a bit while holding Ariga captive. It’s the whole reason for this meeting. Seeing what Ariga had heard (probably a lot, but all of it had been filtered through a hazy, drugged consciousness.) Seeing if Ariga had any actionable information (probably very little.) 

It’s an interesting touch having Gojou come to him privately rather than demanding it be put on the record formally. They aren’t standing in the harsh light of Kamikita’s office. This isn’t going into any report. Maybe they know to expect little of Ariga’s observation skills. 

“Thank you, Ariga.” Gojou’s head tilts a little, as though he might understand Ariga if he just saw him from another angle. “You’ve been very helpful.” 

_Have I? Have I **really?**_

“You’re welcome.” 

It’s a stretch to say he’s mentally begging Gojou to leave. His emotions aren’t strong enough for that these days. However, he’s expecting it, sooner rather than later. He tries to estimate the mostly likely approximate time of departure. Ariga knows he’ll watch it happen and then he’ll go back to work. 

Gojou kind of rubs the back of his neck and stays in his chair. “This used to be my room, actually.” It’s hard to figure out what’s softening all the edges of his voice. Nostalgia or sympathy? 

“It’s a pretty good room.” Ariga is just stringing words together. Objects, verbs, nouns. 

He also stifles an inexplicable urge to apologize for taking up space that doesn’t belong to him. Gojou’s space. For desecrating these four walls. For desecrating these beds. He hasn’t met Gojou until this mission, but he and Shiba are one of those legendary partnerships. It must be galling to know that the space they once shared had been subsequently tainted. 

Gojou still won’t leave. He just lets out a heavy sigh, and folds his arms. There’s nothing aggressive about it. It’s almost self-protective. 

“Ariga…” A very long pause. Who knows what Mamiya would have heard in this silence. “How are you? Really?” 

It’s like being on the outskirts of an in-joke barbed conversation between two very close friends. The words all have smooth edges and pitfalls and no place to find purchase. 

“I’m fine,” he says, because it’s the acceptable answer. 

“That doesn’t-” Gojou seems to catch himself before he accuses Ariga of not making sense. It’s distantly interesting because it’s easy to sense he didn’t always have such restraint. “I’m sorry. I’m prying and I know it. I’m not asking as your superior or anything or to get you officially reprimanded. I’m just asking as someone who was a friend to Haku and Eiri. And they aren’t here right now, so…” 

Oh, interesting. Gojou was on first name basis with Mitsumi and Kaidou. Ariga and Mamiya never got that far. ‘Seiren’ was, somehow, as much as a tongue twister as code words in English and Russian. 

A lot had gone wrong when Mitsumi and Kaidou had graduated actually.

“You were friends with our senpai?” he muses. “We aren’t supposed to have those, though. Other than your messiah.” 

“Ah, well, yeah.” Gojou’s eyes don’t leave him. “Lots of things happen here when they technically shouldn’t.” 

Like cadets that are spies. Like partnerships that fail. 

Ariga’s eyes travel Gojou’s body, up and down. Considers the language encoded in a furrowed brow, and shoulders that draw in close to the neck. He reads him the same way he might an opponent. It’s one of the things he knows how to do best, after all. 

“There’s another reason you care.” Ariga blurts this out without thinking about it. This is rare behavior, but maybe Kagami is rubbing off on him. “I just don’t know what it is, yet.” 

It’s not a mortal blow, but near enough. Gojou’s eyebrows raise, and he sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Maybe. Probably, yeah. My first messiah was… also…” Gojou’s throat works for some eternally long seconds, but then he lapses into stillness again. 

“He died?” 

“He infiltrated us. He was a terrorist. I had no idea. He was killed.” One narrative, and four different ideas. All painful in their own right. 

“Were you the one to do it?” This is worse than picking at a wound, and the pain leeches Ariga’s voice of any strength. 

Gojou sketches in his own experiences, and Ariga can’t help but graft them onto his own. At least he knows Mamiya is never going to burst in, forcing him to choose between him and Kagami. And Mamiya hadn’t gotten Shirasaki, Yuuri, or Kagami killed. That was something. The thought of any of those three dying… Well. He veers sharply away from that. 

Forced inaction is his biggest commonality with Gojou. Days upon days after their first messiah had fled (though Gojou hadn’t known that at the time.) Days upon days to reflect on all the gruesome possibilities. Final meetings that were somehow worse than their darkest fantasies. 

“You were with Mamiya before he left.” 

“I was.” A short pause. That kindly scrutinizing look resurfaces. “Do you want to know more about what we talked about?” It’s nice of Gojou to ask. Most people would probably conceal it from him, or blithely bluster in to all the details. 

Ariga nods. 

The answer is underwhelming. Gojou had tried being uncommonly honest about the difficulty of the messiah bond. Mamiya had been visibly stressed and guarded all at once. Maybe a little reassured, but he’d also made his final escape right after. The whole thing rings true, because Ariga’s own conversations with Mamiya had been like that. 

It shouldn’t make him feel ill, but it does. This is _it._ His final revelation about his first messiah. And it’s as venomously opaque as everything related to Mamiya. 

_I hate you. **I hate you.** You saved me once. I miss you. _

_I wish I could make it right._

“You asked me how I feel.” Ariga is covering his face with his hands. It feels cold.

“I did, yes.” That voice is gentle. Those words are gentle. 

Ariga lifts his head. “Sometimes I feel okay. Honestly. But sometimes I… don’t feel.” 

For a second or too, Gojou looks like he might reach out to him. For what, Ariga can’t say. “Yeah, that’s normal. At least it was for me.” 

“What did you do?” 

“I focused on Shuusuke and our tasks and eventually…” His words mumble away into nothing. 

They both stare at each other, and then Gojou lets out a creaky kind of laugh. “I wasn’t much help, was I?” 

It’s not really about help though, is it? There are no answers for this. No quick fixes. Grief is the strangest riddle of all. 

Ariga's focusing on the little details again. The look of shock on Yuuri and Shirasaki's face as he and Kagami had laughed at them. The itchiness of the scratch on his face, and how it means invisible forces are at play. Healing him.

And today, this short conversation, with a near stranger.

“It means something that you asked,” Ariga says, and he means it. 


End file.
